December Gardening Chores + Tasks

December is officially the first month of winter. It’s also an admittedly lean time in the garden, but the bright side is that there is an even leaner to-do list! Learn what December gardening chores you should be doing this month to ensure that your garden is ready to live it’s best life next spring.

December is cold and wet here on the farmstead, but not snowy. It’s both a blessing and a curse to live in a temperate rain forest. We rarely get snow or ice, but we trade that for what can seem like never-ending rain. Instead of frozen ground, we get mud. Instead of snow, we get mud. I guess it’s just the price I must pay for the privilege of starting my planting season outside in early March (if it’s not too muddy).

In between rainstorms, Jasper and I are slowly working our way through putting the garden to bed for the year. We’ve been adding layers of newspaper and cardboard, and topping with poultry manure, compost and straw. We had to buy a truckload of manure/compost mix this year, since the chickens and ducks just don’t produce enough for our needs. Maybe when we add goats and pigs to the farm we’ll have enough in-house manure to spread without having to buy any. A girl can dream, right?

December Gardening Chores + Tasks List

Please keep in mind that these December gardening chores are examples of tasks I do in my northwest maritime garden (zone 8). Every garden is different, and you may need to adapt your chores based on climate, growing zone and conditions, among other things.

Please take what I do as inspiration for your own gardening tasks, and grow your own roots with it!

January | February | March | April | May | June |July | August | September | October | November | December

Here are the most important December gardening chores to get done before the month ends!

Maintenance and Clean Up

There’s really not a big to-do list this month. Mostly I just wander around and check to make sure all is in order. Despite writing these lists of tasks, I somehow always find empty pots or coils of hose lying about in the weather. Friends, make sure to do as I say; not as I do!

Check your soil for pH levels and any nutrient deficiencies

Spread wood ash throughout the garden

Add mulch, such as straw or leaves, to any exposed soil

Dig a trench where you’ll grow peas next season, and add your food scraps directly to it

Plant this month:

Bare-root trees (make sure to stake them so the wind doesn’t blow them over)

Spring-flowering bulbs

Prune this month:

Ever-bearing raspberries

Marionberry canes

Apple, pear and peach trees

Grapevines

Winter pruning can continue until it isn’t winter anymore. If it’s very cold and frozen where you are though, you might skip pruning for now. Use your best judgement!

Harvesting

If you live in a warmer or more temperate zone like I do, you might still have crops to harvest this month! Heck, even if it’s covered in snow where you live, you might have a row or two of especially hardy vegetables still out in the garden. Here are the cold-hardy plants you could still be harvesting this month.

Cold-tolerant plants // harvest as needed:

Beets

Brussels sprouts

Carrots

Cauliflower

Kale

Kohlrabi

Parsnips

Leeks

Rutabagas and turnips

Winter radishes

If more than a frost threatens, I would go ahead and cover your plants with cloches or fleece row covers (this is what I use), just to be on the safe side. Also, if you’re leaving carrots in the ground to harvest throughout the winter (I am this year!) give them a nice, thick mulch with straw to keep their tops from freezing.

Pests and Diseases

December is a great time to root out and prevent pests and diseases from taking hold in your garden.

Check any remaining crops for yellow leaves and remove them

Burn diseased and mildewed leaves, branches and foliage

Cover new apple trees with net to keep starlings and crows from eating the new buds

Inspect your Root Cellar

Be sure to inspect your stored food every month! Get rid of anything that is starting to show signs of rot or that just isn’t keeping well, and make sure to use the smaller, damaged produce first.

And, finally, one of my favorite December gardening chores is — to start planning for next year! Throughout the growing season I’ve been jotting down things I want to do differently, and now is no different. Emptied of all growth, it’s easy to see now how best to shape the garden beds for next year, where to put the paths, and where to add new growing spaces. Stand in the window (or wherever you best like to look at your garden) and think about what you’d like to see there next year. And make sure to write it all down; it’s much easier to remember while the garden’s still fresh in your memory

What are some of your must-do December gardening chores?

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Comments

Great tips as usual. Yeah between us and the ducks there’s definitely not enough compost to cover a large garden! The big thing that we have learned now being out on the North Coast is that our smaller rain barrels need to remain full of water. Usually in the fall when it’s raining so much and they fill up in about a half an hour, we keep the front faucets on them open so that they aren’t overflowing in the back, and because of how they were placed they did fine in the wind… Until the REAL wind began a week or two ago and we woke up the next morning to find the 60 gallon barrel in the front yard a good 30 feet away from the stand it was on 🙂 so we immediately let it refill and anchor itself and it definitely stayed put. the other thing that we learned is because our coop is fairly far from the house and we rely on the thousand gallon rain tank that we have a hose attached to to refill their water every day… Which means in the coldest of mornings the water in the hose is frozen solid, so we’ve had to adjust our routines to refill their water midday each day instead of every morning. of course they don’t care since they drink out of their pool half the time as it is 😁😁😁